


His body is

by ringtheory



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Language of Flowers, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 16:37:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21930493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ringtheory/pseuds/ringtheory
Summary: Not long after Felix leaves the monastery, a slender branch begins to grow from his chest, protruding modestly the skin so that is noticeable only upon careful observation. Though its roots must lie close to his heart, he doesn’t feel pain when he touches the branch and it grows back to the same shape when he trims it down, so he decides to leave it be.The branch begins to grow in earnest after Dimitri’s execution is announced; it splits into tendrils and begins to wrap itself around Felix’s upper body like climbing ivy. Though Felix knows he should find the growth bizarre, he cannot bring himself to be concerned about the branch for long enough to properly worry about it is or isn’t. Instead he chases rumors of the crown prince’s violent defense of the Kingdom with calculated recklessness; the branch grows around his limbs in erratic spirals. Both the rumors and the branch move by patterns in which Felix can find neither meaning nor resolution.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 11
Kudos: 61
Collections: 2019 Dimilix Holiday Exchange





	1. To you, who knows not.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [machuba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/machuba/gifts).



> This work is intended to be read using the "Entire Work" format. Thank you.

Not long after Felix leaves the monastery, a slender branch begins to grow from his chest, protruding modestly the skin so that is noticeable only upon careful observation. Though its roots must lie close to his heart, he doesn’t feel pain when he touches the branch and it grows back to the same shape when he trims it down, so he decides to leave it be.

The branch begins to grow in earnest after Dimitri’s execution is announced; it splits into tendrils and begins to wrap itself around Felix’s upper body like climbing ivy. Though Felix knows he should find the growth bizarre, he cannot bring himself to be concerned about the branch for long enough to properly worry about it is or isn’t – especially when there are a multitude of other things pressing down on his mind with a terribly severe weight. The branch neither hurts nor impedes him and so is of tertiary importance at best.

Against the wishes of anybody who cares enough to express an opinion about what Felix chooses to do with his life, Felix leaves Fraldarius not long after Dimitri’s alleged death. He chases rumors of the crown prince’s violent defense of the Kingdom with calculated recklessness; the branch grows around his limbs in erratic spirals. Both the rumors and the branch move by patterns in which Felix can find neither meaning nor resolution.

After a year and a half of roaming, Felix runs out of shadows to pin his hopes to. He returns to Fraldarius and declares he will dedicate himself fully to defending the Kingdom henceforth. In reply, his father tells him this is what he has already been doing. Felix understands that to be pretense rather than praise, but he is too tired to do anything but pretend he is willing to play along with the idea that he has always been thinking of the Kingdom first and its once future king second.

Felix goes to sleep that night with the guilt of giving up lodged in his throat. His body is a vessel in collapse. When he tries to think of what to do next, all that comes to mind is the color white.

Dogwood: _Am I indifferent to you?_

You must know various things before you are permitted to speak. We have been given life for the purpose of telling you what these things are. Let us begin.

When the moon comes out, he thinks of you. As the early-morning frost melts under the sun during spring, he thinks of you. Felix walked tens of thousands of steps until the soles of his boots wore out but still he found the strength to put one foot in front of the other because he was thinking of you. He unsheathed his sword and fought until the iron of his blade chipped. When his blade finally parted from its hilt – of course Felix thought of you. Who else would it be but you?

Your birthright found its way to House Fraldarius but you did not. Felix silently wished that his father would entrust Areadbhar to him, because the task of protecting Areadhar would not have been about returning your inheritance – it would have been about bringing you home.

Instead Areadbhar was locked in the family vault for safekeeping, whether for you or its unknown next bearer. Though Felix resisted his legacy when the two of you were still students, he took up the Aegis Shield to make up for the fact that he could not deliver Areadbhar unto you. Every time a weapon hits it, the shield makes an odd sound that has a strange profoundness to its reverb. It sounds both like a bell ringing and a beast roaring. Always the echo makes him think of you.

Behold these flowers but know they are not for you to take. They mean “a love undiminished by adversity”. He has grown them while thinking of you. Who else would they be for but you?

When Felix wakes up in the morning it is easier to breathe. He looks at himself in the mirror and finds that the branch has grown as if to brace the back of his neck and open his diaphragm so that he can inhale more deeply. There is a small bud growing at one of the ends of the branch near his left wrist.

He feels better though he does not feel well. The guilt is still there but it no longer chokes him.

Felix decides that he is neither giving up on hope nor will he believe in it. He will postpone his choice on whether or not to believe. He cannot yet make himself choose – but he can find within the patience to wait.

He does not permit himself the realization that this is also a choice.

Felix joins forces with Ingrid and Sylvain. Together, they hold eastern Faerghus against the Dukedom and do not talk about what or who is missing.

More buds grow along the branches; eventually, they begin to blossom the Kingdom’s royal blue. The flowers are so small that Felix does not notice them until several days after they bloom. The flowers remain perfectly formed even though they should be crushed under the layers of his clothing during the day or when he lays down to sleep at night, as if they are preserved in a different space than the one Felix is used to moving through. Each of them has a different number of petals – some are more symmetric than others – but all of them are the exact same color.

Ingrid and Sylvain are kind enough to be tolerant of Felix’s occasional bouts of flightiness and never say a word when he finds an excuse to follow a new lead. The rumors that might be about Dimitri become darker and so do the flowers growing upon Felix, until they are the both of them almost completely black.

The night that would have been the Millennium Festival comes. Felix returns to the monastery along with Ingrid and Sylvain. There he finds more than he could have asked for and less than he had longed for.

When Felix finally sees Dimitri with his own two eyes, his flowers turn a near-translucent white and grow to twice their original size. He does not know this metamorphosis has occurred until much later in the night, when he returns to his old dorm and finally has the space to begin undressing both his body and his mind. He doesn’t think anything about his own change but he thinks deeply about how Dimitri has changed.

Knowing that Dimitri has not slept, Felix does not sleep for several nights. His body is a sieve in disrepair; he finds he can no longer hold onto the thoughts that he needs the most.

Bellflower: _The return of a friend is desired._

You know that it is in poor taste to gift flowers in northern Faerghus as pure information. But we wish to explain to you why Felix understands this more deeply as memory than as fact.

When he was six, he spent two weeks staying at House Blaiddyd’s summer residence near the Tailtean Plains. Many years later he would learn it was not upon personal invitation that he was permitted to stay but because his father and brother had been requested to attend to the royal family, and it had been more convenient to take Felix along than to arrange for a caretaker to mind him back in Fraldarius. At the time such concerns floated above his head, less real to him than were the play-pretend fantasies that the two of you would daydream together.

Following a disagreement with you at lunchtime over some small and forgettable concern, Felix had wandered off alone until he reached the boundaries of the manor grounds. He would not have strayed to where he knew he should not have been except that a patch of wildflowers in a nearby clearing caught his eyes. Felix carefully dug them out by the roots and thought to gift them to you – not because he hoped to use them as a conduit toward making up but because he always wanted to give the good and beautiful and wondrous things in his life to you.

Did you appreciate that?

Glenn found him as he had finished digging out the third flower and asked him what he was doing. Felix answered honestly. After hearing Felix’s reply, Glenn grabbed Felix by the wrist, dislodging the flowers from his hand, and said to him something so sharp that Felix felt as if he had been cut right down to the bone.

Felix cried as he replanted the flowers and cried as Glenn carried him back to the house and cried until he’d seen your face again. Then he ran to your side and hugged you with a terribly earnest desperation. He refused to answer when you asked what was wrong – so deep was his shame, so genuine was his regret. He has never recounted this memory to any soul, either living or dead. But now we tell you because you should know.

It was later explained to Felix that flowers are not given in northern Faerghus because of how barren the land is. Any plants that can grow on its soils are treated with diligence and thorough consideration. A wildflower in its peak may be picked if it is to be pressed or dried; only after its life has been preserved is it an acceptable gift. Better still would be to wait and harvest its seeds, then present those instead. A gift of flower seeds represents the hope for many new beginnings. A gift of cut flowers represents the opposite.

 _Do you want Dimitri to die?_ Glenn had said.

Behold these flowers but know they are not yours to take. They mean “an endless love”. He has grown them to share with you. Do you appreciate them?

After the fourth night that Felix unconsciously denies himself sleep, the flowers begin to produce a subtle, sweet fragrance that reminds Felix of a time before his memories were distinct. The smell is not of his mother but the concept of motherhood itself; it lulls him into a deep and pleasant slumber in which he dreams of nothing and his mind finally rests.

As he sleeps, the branches curl a little tighter around him. They do not restrict to the point of discomfort, but enough that when he wakes up, he feels again that he fits perfectly in his own skin.

Felix dresses himself. All the flowers are covered under his many layers of clothes; he does not have to hide them, they are by nature hidden. He walks from the monastery dorms to the cathedral and takes up the place he belongs to the most. Dimitri has not yet truly returned – so he continues to wait.

The war goes on and they defend the monastery. The war goes on and they march on Ailell. The war goes on and they march on the Great Bridge of Myrddin. The war goes on and they march on Grondor Field. The war goes on but Felix’s father dies.

Felix has known since an age too young for such heavy considerations that his family tree is withered at the tips. If he were blessed with choice then he would prefer rotting over the neat pruning of its branches because he may be of a family important enough to warrant drawing out its tree, but families are not like trees: cutting his family down will not make its surviving branch grow stronger.

The night that his father dies, Felix demands only solitude. He locks himself into his room and strips himself. He pulls out the toothed dagger that his brother had gifted him when he began his hunting lessons. And calmly – very calmly – deliberately, he cuts the flowers off of the branches that have grown out of his body – one by one he removes them, until sixteen blooms have fallen to his feet. It does not hurt but neither is it pleasant. Even though the flowers have been with him for months, he feels nothing when they are parted.

Then he cries.

For only that night, his body is a cemetery in mourning. The flowers around him remain immaculate even separated from their symbiote.

Red camellia: _To die with grace._

This is especially important. You must listen carefully.

Felix does not know the language of flowers. But he knows that you once adored flowers. Did you realize that your eyes were always drawn to the wildflowers whenever you would play outside together? Well – you were young and your ignorance excusable. Perhaps your eyes were simply drawn to that which you thought was most radiant.

But you must now know the truth and understand what it means: while you were looking at those flowers, he was looking at you.

Behold these flowers but know they are not yours to take. They mean “to be in love”. He has grown them for you to adore. Are your eyes drawn to them?

Or – are your eyes instead drawn to him?

The cut flowers take on the color of the sun when it rises; it is a tint similar to Felix’s eyes. The branches rooted in Felix’s chest remain. Still they support Felix despite his betrayal: tendrils grow parallel to Felix’s spine and have him keep his posture proud and tall with his back exactly perpendicular to the ground beneath his feet. Felix gathers the flowers and arranges them into a square of fours on his desk before he leaves his room.

Felix goes on with living. Separately but no less profoundly: so does Dimitri.

Shortly before the Kingdom army retakes Fhirdiad, the two of them have a meal together for the first time in years. They talk without fighting and Felix does not know what to make of the warmth in Dimitri’s voice when he speaks to or about Felix. The first flower wilts.

On the way back to the monastery, they pass the mansion that royal family kept as a summer house. Though it has fallen into disrepair, they use it as an overnight camp before they finish the journey back to Garreg Mach. That night the two of them walk around the grounds together. They barely converse but they stay so close that the backs of their hands barely touch the entire time.

Upon returning, Felix finds that two more flowers have wilted. The night before they leave for the Alliance capital, yet another begin to three wither away. Felix puts those three between his old textbooks and hopes idly that they might still be preserved – but he is unsurprised when he later finds that the petals have browned and smudged between the pages.

Dimitri asks him to help with chores and Felix doesn’t find any reason to deny him. They spend several afternoons clearing rubble from the monastery grounds. Every once in a while, Felix will see Dimitri pause to look at wildflowers where they grow – but then Dimitri will glance up and meet Felix’s gaze as if he knew that Felix would be watching him.

Four more flowers shrivel up before they march on Arianrhod. The branches entwined around Felix begin to steadily recede back into him, but as they return to his body he feels lighter and lighter. By the time that the army is prepared to invade Enbarr, there is only one flower remaining and the branch is again but a modest protrusion from the left side of his chest.

Felix does not have to see the sixteenth flower wither to sense that its withering is inevitable. So he opens a window in the hallway and lets the wind scatter its petals to places unknown while they are still beautiful.

The war ends and the reign of the Savior King begins.

Separately but no less profoundly: the branch unroots itself from Felix’s heart and reshapes itself into one final flower bud.

Wisteria: _The release of a burden._

Have you yet realized that we are inextricably linked with you? Felix bloomed for you. And in your stead, we bloomed for him.

Behold this final flower and know it is not yours to take. It means “a love that endures”. If you understand that which we were born to tell you: then speak and you will be heard.


	2. For us, the enduring.

I looked at you and though I do not know how – suddenly I understood. Perhaps it was reflected in the color of your eyes; they are the same as the flowers you grew. When the sun rises, I always think of you and how it feels to meet your gaze: light, clear, full of hope. I want to tell you that every morning. Will you tire of it if I do?

Please believe me when I say that I already loved you. And I suspected that you as well already loved me. What I knew not before that moment was _how_ you have loved me. In the moment that I understood, any hesitation I still had scattered like petals in the wind and I was compelled to confess. For my country, I wish to be a good king. For you – I wish to be a good man.

“I love you,” I said. “I want to be with you until the end of my days. But I am not asking you to stay with me, Felix. I am asking… if you would let me stay with you.”

You put your hand over your heart and I knew without seeing that the final flower was blossoming underneath. Your body was a garden in bloom. I could not take my gaze off of you. Though I knew what your heart would answer, still your silence shook me to my core.

I watched your lips move. You smiled first and stepped closer. Then you replied to me – and in the warmth of your words, my body as well become as a garden in bloom.


End file.
